The Highwaymen (2019): written by John Fusco; directed by John Lee Hancock; starring Kevin Costner (Frank Hamer), Woody Harrelson (Maney Gault), Kathy Bates (Ma Ferguson), and John Carroll Lynch (Lee Simmons):
It's 1934 and Bonnie and Clyde cut a swath through Texas law enforcement. Enter retired Texas Rangers Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, tasked with trying to bring the homicidal gang to justice.
At their ages, Harrelson and Costner play off one another beautifully as what are basically old gunslingers on one last hunt. The landscapes are beautifully shot. There's also a nicely under-stated, droll sense of humour to some of the proceedings. But there are also moments of horror, just as there were in real life.
As in Arthur Penn's landmark 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde, this film plays fast and loose with a few historical facts, though fewer than Penn's film, which romanticized the dangerous duo. Kathy Bates, John Carroll Lynch, and William Sadler offer strong support as secondary characters. Some may find this overlong; I found it elegiac. Recommended.
The Black Cat, written by Peter Ruric and Edgar Ulmer, 'inspired' by the short story by Edgar Allan Poe; directed by Edgar G. Ulmer; starring Bela Lugosi (Dr. Werdegast) and Boris Karloff (Poelzig) (1934): Karloff and Lugosi made seven movies together for Universal in the 1930's. This is the best of them, thanks in large part to B-movie auteur Edgar Ulmer's direction and set design. Lugosi's Werdegast was a Hungarian soldier imprisoned by the Russians for 18 years after World War One; Poelzig was his nemesis, a Russian military officer.
Lugosi's unusually heroic (for him) character tries to save an American couple from the Satanic Poelzig, now living in a Hungarian military fort turned into a manion, while also trying to discover the fate of his wife and child at the hands of the former enemy military commander.
The set design, lighting, and costuming all present a sort of Art Deco Gothic look that suits the material. Poelzig really is the leader of a Satanic cult. He also married Werdegast's wife after his imprisonment. And where is the daughter?
As with every one of the Karloff/Lugosi collaborations I've seen, the romantic leads are bland and forgettable, and the comic-relief bits are excruciating. Thankfully, Karloff and Lugosi aren't. Lugosi is uncharacteristically subdued here, possibly because he finally gets to play the hero. The movie looks great and has some nice, snappy dialogue ("Even the phone is dead" being my favourite one-liner). And there are dead women preserved in giant glass bottles and a high-stakes chess game! No killer apes, though.
The Poe elements are almost non-existent, limited pretty much to hints of heterosexual necrophilia and a black cat that wanders through at points to scare Werdegast, who suffers from fear of cats. Highly recommended.
